


Biggles Gets About

by FireflyFairey



Category: Biggles Series - W. E. Johns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23197735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyFairey/pseuds/FireflyFairey
Summary: Rising to the challenge set by Wateroverstone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Biggles Gets About

It was a fairly typical Sunday morning at home. The papers had arrived with a thump on the doorstep, snatches of song could be heard coming from the kitchen.

Biggles lay in his warm bed, torn between a few minutes more sleep and breakfast- the smell of frying bacon was enticing. His growling stomach prompted him to throw back the bedsheets and open the curtains.

Sunday was the one day he permitted himself to have breakfast in his pyjamas and dressing gown. It was a habit he had developed on the infrequent weekends spent with Marie in her Hampshire cottage. More often than not Algy was the only member of the household at home on Sundays to take advantage of Mrs Symes’ cooking. While their Interpol work took them to many places around the world, Algy was usually left to hold the fort.

Biggles, having shaved and washed (for there was no point looking like a salvage dump, he reasoned), picked up a plate and helped himself from the bain-marie that Mrs Symes had set up on the sideboard before joining Ginger at the table.

Algy arrived, his hair still tousled. “Late night?” Biggles asked, adding milk and sugar to his coffee.

“More like early morning,” Algy grinned, snatching a piece of toast from Biggles plate as he passed.

Biggles rapped his hand with the spoon. “Didn’t your nanny teach you not to eat from other people’s plates,” he said reprovingly.

“No, did yours?” Algy munched on his ill-gotten toast triangle. “Papers in yet, Ginger?”

“I heard them arrive earlier. Bertie usually brings them in when he comes in from walking Towser.”

Algy piled his plate high and joined Biggles at the table. Biggles deftly took a piece of toast from Algy’s plate. “Now we’re square,” he said. Algy made a face at him.

A bout of yapping could be heard from outside. The door slammed shut, and with an excited scrabbling of paws and the request from the kitchen that said paws be wiped, a small brown and white dog burst into the breakfast- room and sat beside Biggles, furiously wagging his tail. “Oh, you’d like some bacon, would you?” Biggles laughed and held out a rind. Towser snatched at it, and his point made, dashed off with this morsel.

“Can I have a shufti at the….oh,” Algy began when he saw Bertie.

Biggles paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “What’s up?” he said at the look of fury on Bertie’s face.

“This…rag,” Bertie spat out, tossing the papers onto the table. “Page five.” Biggles picked up the Sunday Sun-Times.

The headline on page five read ‘BIGGLES GETS ABOUT- ARE OUR S.A.P.’s THE SAPS OR ARE WE?’

Scattered throughout the article were photographs of each of them.

“Inspector Bigglesworth of Scotland Yard’s Special Air Police, recently returned from an overseas all-expenses-paid trip to the United States of America, to attend a conference on international police co-operation. Upon his return, he was whisked straight to the Secret Policemen’s Ball, where he introduced one of the performers. Was it jet-lag or the free whiskey on the aircraft that made him forget who he was supposed to be introducing, and introduce John Lennon instead of John Cleese?  
The following day he was seen driving his Ford Pilot down in Hampshire, where he met with a handsome older lady, with whom he seemed on intimate terms. Local rumour has it that this woman was somewhat of a ‘Mata Hari’ in her younger days.

“But ‘Biggles’ (as he is known to his friends) isn’t the only member of his team to get about. Just last week the Honourable Algy Lacey was photographed coming out of a very expensive hotel on the arm of Lady Hannah Ffotheringon-Smythe- Jones. (See photograph below)

“Lady Hannah’s pedigree is as long as her own horses, and she is married to the minor foreign diplomat Sir Frederick Jones, who spends much of his time away from home on official business, or fishing up in the highlands of Scotland. Is it any wonder Lady Hannah gets lonely and is ready to fall into the arms of a good-looking man? And what a comfortable armful she is, too!

“A whisper has reached this reporter’s ears that this is not the first time they have been seen together and that upon more than one occasion, the Honourable Algy’s bow tie was rather askew.

“Lord Bertie Lissie once raced boats in the beautiful Mediterranean Port of Monaco in Monte Carlo, before a distinguished Air Force career led to him becoming a member of the ‘Flying Fuzz’. He has a well- regarded pack of foxhounds; the pups are in great demand and can sell for many hundreds of pounds. While Lord Lissie is regarded as somewhat of a catch, debutantes may look for him in vain at any of the season’s fashionable events.

“He is pictured (right) with old school-friend and former Commando, Sir Lorrington King in Rupert street, Soho. Readers might recall the raids that took place at a certain establishment in that street last year by the Vice Squad.

“The final member of the ‘Winged Rozzers’ is young Constable Hebblethwaite. His red hair and freckles have given him the nickname of ‘Ginger’. Sources say he is an unassuming lad, with a disarming smile and a reputation for ingenuity. When not accompanying Biggles on his overseas jaunts, he spends most of his leisure time at the cinema, or getting lost. We don’t know how he manages to have his photograph taken with so many actresses as a lowly copper, but as you can see from the photograph above taken at a recent red-carpet London Premiere, that he looks thrilled to meet Marilyn Monroe. Someone should tell him it’s not polite to stare at her like she is a particularly juicy lamb-chop.

“When these members of Her Majesty’s Flying Finest are earning their crust on home soil, they make their base in swanky Mayfair, amongst the embassies and well-to-do residents, frequenting a nearby French restaurant for their dinner.

“A recent Freedom of Information enquiry of their expenses has revealed an extraordinarily high expenditure for items of clothing damaged or destroyed in the line of duty, particularly shirts. What do they do with their shirts, I hear you ask? Tear strips from them and make bandages?

“But I ask you, dear reader- are we the taxpayers the real saps here? Are we paying our policemen too much? Or do they have the money and connections to be able to reside in Mayfair? Very good connections they must be indeed.

“An Inquiry must be made!”

Biggles folded the paper with a thoughtful look on his face.

“I didn’t stare!” Ginger said hotly.

“You did, laddie,” Algy grinned.

“There’s nothing untrue about any of the claims, though,” Biggles said quietly. “It’s just the way they are worded that makes them distasteful.”

“Distasteful!” Bertie began polishing his eyeglass wrathfully. “I’ll show them bally distasteful.”

“There isn’t much we can do, Bertie. But having our photographs in the papers could leave us in a bit of a bind,” Biggles admitted, “but I suggest we go about our usual routine until something happens to change things.”

The next few days proved interesting. There appeared to be a larger than usual amount of people walking along Mount Street looking up into the windows. Many of them were young girls, some of them giggling. A couple of them started knocking on doors asking if Ginger or Algy were at home.

The general residents of Mount Street were displeased, and politely disclaimed all knowledge of Ginger, Algy or the Special Air Police, instead suggesting they try Scotland Yard. Mrs Symes took a different view, and chased them away with the end of her broom. The girls were not disheartened by this action however, as it confirmed that they had the right address.

The crowds grew from a few girls to a hundred. One enterprising young woman held up a banner that read ‘Ginger will you marry me?’

Ginger had been forced to leave and enter the house via the back garden after his shirt had been torn off his back by the hysterical mob.

Algy too had been mobbed and had managed adroitly to extract himself, but somehow found himself with a collection of moist knickers in his pockets.

A flood of letters had arrived. Most of them were for Bertie, forwarded on from his country estate. They varied from gilded invitations to exclusive soirees given by society dames, to jovial ‘come up and hunt with us- m’ daughter hunts, too’ notes from their husbands.

Bertie threw them into the fire that evening, minus the stamps, which he gave to Ginger for his collection. “I had one chappie come up to me this morning, and asked if I had a friend called Dorothy,” Bertie complained to the others that evening as they went about their evening’s leisure. “I asked him if he meant Lady Dorothy Perkins. He smiled and gave me a card and a peculiar handshake.” Bertie pulled out a discreet card and handed it to Biggles. “I shoved it in my pocket and toddled off quickly. I was glad to get away from him.”

Biggles took it. “Isn’t that a place Vice are keeping an eye on?”

“The cheeky blighter!” Bertie exclaimed wrathfully, snatching back the card. “What is he insinuating?” he demanded of the others after reading it. He tore it up and threw it onto the fire. It flared briefly before falling to ash.

Algy gave a low whistle. “Well I’ll be damned!” he looked up from his own letter. “I’m being named as a co-respondent in a divorce case. Freddy Jones has had enough of the divine Lady Hannah Ffotherington-Smythe-Jones. That photo in the paper was the final straw, she says.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Ginger told him, “the way you squire married women about.”

“It’s the done thing amongst the peerage,” Algy informed him haughtily, “and as long as you have presented your husband with an-heir-and-a-spare, a little extra marital activity is overlooked so long as you don’t do it in the street and scare the horses. It’s accepted well and truly amongst the upper classes.”

Ginger shot him a look. “Then I’m glad I’m descended from common mining stock,” he snapped, and got up to look out the window.

The afternoon had closed in and it was a very wet and gloomy street below. The streetlight closest to the flat cast a sickly yellow pool of light that rippled as the raindrops fell onto the ground. The crowd of the day had gone home, driven out by the conditions. “I’m going out,” Ginger said abruptly, slamming the door as he left.

“You put your foot in it there, Algy old boy,” Biggles said gently. ‘You know how sensitive he is over his upbringing.

“He’ll get over it,” Algy said shortly.

***

Ginger walked miserably through the wet streets to one of his favourite cinemas, paid for his ticket and went inside. He wasn’t very interested in the actual film, as he had seen it before, but the cinema and foyer were warm and comforting. He stayed until well after the newsreel and main feature had ended and the crowd had gone home, talking to the cigarette girl, whose name was Ann, and Phyllis the coat girl. The rain had stopped by the time he left, and the street was deserted. Pulling up his coat collar he hunched his shoulders and began to walk home, feeling a bit brighter. A scurrying of feminine footsteps caught up with him, and a small arm slipped through his. “Walk me home, copper?” the cigarette girl grinned up at him. “It depends on where home is, Ann,” he said with a smile. “But I can at least put you in a taxi if it is too far.”

It turned out she shared a flat in Bloomsbury with three other girls, was originally from Coventry and one of ten children, and had come to London to seek her fortune, as she put it. Ginger barely noticed the taxi journey as he was enjoying their conversation so much. He asked the driver to wait and saw her to the door. A few minutes later he had secured a date for the following weekend, and was back in the taxi heading towards Mount Street in a better mood than he had been since the day the paper came out.

The following morning came the announcement in the paper (inserted by Air Commodore Raymond at Biggles’ insistence) that all of the Special Air Police had been asked to participate in a joint Interpol venture with France, and had left the previous day.

Things quickly returned to normal, much to the delight of the Mount Street residents.


End file.
